Spenzer might have been flattered by the comparison to the famous English sleuth.

But he probably wouldn't have denied it.

Story by Brian Albrecht, The Plain Dealer

(John Spenzer is shown holding a cane. As Brandy Schillace, of the Dittrick Medical History Center, noted, "He's not really tall, but he had a big personality.")

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Dittrick Medical History Center

From crime scenes to courtrooms

In a room not far from a display about Spenzer at the Dittrick Medical History Center, senior research associate Brandy Schillace recently talked about the colorful and controversial scientist.

"Here in Cleveland we did have a coroner's office, but in a way John George Spenzer was doing all those things," she said.

"He's collecting evidence and newspaper clippings. He's having images drawn up of the murder weapons, the clothing and blood spatters and bullet entry wounds, while also doing the tests, then reporting in courtroom dramas as sort-of a seasoned expert."

Just the sort of thing you might expect from a man who was kind-of a medical savant, according to Schillace.

(A drawing from the files of John Spenzer.)

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Dittrick Medical History Center

A world student emerges

Spenzer, who came from a family of pharmacists, graduated from Western Reserve College with a medical degree at age 16, according to Schillace.

But he was too young to practice medicine so he traveled to Europe at a time when the study of forensics and criminology was being considerably advanced by such scientists as Hans Gross in Germany, and Edmond Locard in France.

Both Gross and Locard were known for developing practices involving the cross-transfer of evidence from criminal to victim (and vice-versa), fingerprinting and scientific examination of evidence.

When Spenzer returned to Cleveland, he became a professor of chemistry and "medical jurisprudence" (forensics) at Western Reserve College in 1910, and a self-described "world student," and generic "expert" -- as he put at the top of his letterhead.

Schillace said he began compiling meticulous details of local crime cases; filling notebooks with his observations and illustrations. This material may have been used for use in his medical jurisprudence class lectures.

Boxes of those notebooks, plus photos and artifacts related to Spenzer, were later donated to the Dittrick Medical History Center, and largely overlooked until Schillace started going through them in 2014.

(Newspaper clipping from the John Spenzer collection.)

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Dittrick Medical History Center

The 19th century study of crime

At the time that Spenzer entered the field, forensic science was blossoming with new discoveries.

Although crime victim/scene analysis dates back to the ancient Chinese, the late 1800s saw advances in chemical testing for the presence of blood (on clothing, etc.) and poisons in internal organs, bullet comparison, fingerprinting and crime scene photography.

In those years "they called arsenic the 'inheritor's powder' because so many people used it to bump off relatives they didn't like," Schillace noted.

Spenzer began compiling details of the cases when he was called in by police as an expert witness.

"He puts them together in these meticulous notebooks that are highly illustrated in color with watercolors and inks," Schillace said.

Many of the details are "the kind of things we think of being in television cases these days, that wouldn't necessarily been in the purview of a toxicologist (like Spenzer), but he nonetheless was very interested in," she added.

"A lot of these (cases) are quite violent," she added, citing one such crime involving a man who decapitated a woman with a butcher's cleaver.

And then there were the sensational cases that dominated the local newspaper headlines.

(Illustration from the John Spenzer collection.)

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Dittrick Medical History Center

Who killed Ora Lee?

One such case involved the 1908 murder of of Ora Lee, 21, in Medina County, who was found dead on a road after being shot three times in the head and apparently thrown from a carriage and run over by horses.

The man she was engaged to marry, Daniel Guy Rasor, was accused of the murder.

"So Spenzer gets involved in this case, partly because he wants to test (the accused's) clothing to see if he can find evidence of blood," Schillace said.

But just to be complete, his records also include detailed drawings of horses' hoof prints at the scene, and the trajectory of bullets entering the victim's skull.

Schillace said spots that Spenzer found on Rasor's collar turned out to be blood, possibly spatter from the shooting.

Rasor eventually was found guilty of manslaughter and served eight years in prison.